What is interesting about Anne Rice is her tacit assumption that there is no such thing as a liberal Christian identity. One is either a member of the illiberal phenomenon called Christianity, or one is an outsider to it. She wrote on her facebook page

"In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

It seems not occur to Rice to present herself as Christian who rejects the illiberal aspects of the tradition. In other words, the episode is good evidence of the collapse of liberal Christianity, which has gradually occurred over the last few decades.

Why did she not say that she rejects the more conservative churches (she is or was a Roman Catholic, by the way), in favour of a liberal form of church? Presumably because she sees all the major churches as tainted by illiberal tendencies. I think she's basically right about that. Anglicanism, for example, may have a liberal subculture, but it is weak and muddled.

The real question is: why does she not reject organized religion, instead of rejecting Christianity? The claim that she remains "committed to Christ" allows for this. The answer, surely, is that Christianity is so overwhelmingly dominated by institutionalism that it is difficult to lay claim to a non-institutional Christian identity. There is no recognized position of "non-institutional Christian". But there ought to be one – and Rice is in a position to start the ball rolling.

Though she is not exactly a theologian, Rice is a writer with great sensitivity to the nature of religious experience. In fact, not being a theologian might be an advantage for a writer trying to convey the experience of faith. Her recent memoir, Called Out of Darkness, relates her return to the Catholicism of her childhood, after 38 years as an atheist. What is striking about her re-conversion is the absence of intellectual wrestling with the question of God's existence or any other doctrinal matter. The appeal of religion is almost entirely aesthetic. This was the case with her original childhood faith – her early sense of God was "entirely iconic" – rooted in images and sensory experiences rather than ideas and verbal formulas.

And her return to faith was similar. What won her over was her intense appreciation of a handful of works of religious art. She had long enjoyed religious art as a tourist and collector – then, while visiting a church in Brazil, she saw a statue of St. Francis of Assisi embracing a crucified Jesus, and she felt personally addressed by it. She had similar reactions to other depictions of Christ, including the statue that towers over Rio. There was no blinding mystical moment, just a steady deepening of her response to religious art, from aesthetic enjoyment to something more. What is unusual about her account is the way in which she puts art at the heart of faith. I have read other conversion accounts in which art-appreciation acts a spur to conversion, but for Rice it is more than a spur: it is the principal form that faith takes. To "have faith", to "believe in God" is for her firmly rooted in a response to certain religious images.

This is a useful corrective to the tired assumptions of the God debate. Our whole discourse about religion is far too dominated by philosophical framing. Maybe we should learn to see religion as a special sort of artistic tradition. And maybe this is the way in which a non-institutional Christian identity can gain traction. Though images are central to Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, they actually have a powerful anarchic energy: they quietly imply that the essence of religion lies here, in the magic of representation, and not in rules and priestcraft.

Rebecca Jenkins: Can you keep Christ and give up being a Christian? Christians are just like other people: envious, fearful, resentful and way-too inclined to tear into others rather question ourselves